Officials were instructed to guide industries to shift investment to "belt and road" countries and the Indochina region of Southeast Asia. Other edicts were to:

establish a complete agricultural trade policy system,

actively participate in negotiations on international rules for trade and investment.

speed up nurture of a set of major international grain traders and agricultural enterprise conglomerates,

encourage enterprises to optimize their industry and market layout worldwide.

The meeting chaired by Minister Han Changfu carefully studied Xi Jinping's thoughts on "rural revitalization" and "one belt, one road" and propagated the themes of building an "open agricultural economy" and international competitiveness in agriculture. According to the Ministry, better coordination of investment and developing a complete policy system improving policy support for overseas investment and technical assistance to continually improve agriculture’s international competitiveness and global influence will "add luster to the modernization of agriculture and rural areas."

There is nothing really new in last week's meeting. All the components have been included in China's recent under-the-radar program to make the country's overseas agricultural investments more effective.

A November 2016 Ministry of Agriculture circular "Program for Construction of 'Two Zones' for External Agricultural Cooperation" laid out an experimental program for trying out various support and development strategies for foreign investors in agriculture to carry out instructions in the State Council's "No. 1 Documents" to improve international cooperation in agriculture with "one belt, one road" countries and foster big grain traders and agribusiness conglomerates. Participating companies can be both state-owned and private, and non-agricultural companies are also encouraged.

In a two-year pilot program the strategy will throw different ideas at the wall and see which one sticks. "Two zones" refers to foreign "demonstration zones" and "experimental zones." Demonstration zones include various types of technology and industry parks and free trade zones with an emphasis on multiple Chinese businesses working together to form industry clusters and/or chains of industry: seeds, machinery, farming, marketing, processing and sales. "Experimental zones" are zones in China that will experiment with various policies to provide support to overseas investors in agriculture, including information databases, subsidized loans, insurance, training of companies and personnel. Companies could get help raising funds in capital markets, loan guarantees, priority in attaining national-level "dragon head enterprise" status, help with inspection and quarantine procedures. The document called for state-trading enterprises to use their tariff rate quotas to import products of Chinese companies investing in agriculture abroad.

Last July, the first ten demonstration and experimental zones were announced, and the top 100 overseas agricultural investment companies were announced in February 2018. Lists are shown below.

The first 10 demonstration zones included five in Africa, two in central Asia, two in southeast Asia, and a fishing industry zone in Fiji. The Tanzanian zone happens to be in a gold-mining region. Each zone is to be managed by a relatively anonymous provincial company:

First set of Chinese foreign agriculture development zones, announced July 31, 2017

Experimental zones include a mix of port cities, fishing industry centers, inland border crossings, a China-Singapore food trade zone, and a tropical agriculture institute, most managed by city or county governments.

A partial list of the top 100 companies designated for foreign investment in agriculture includes the top state-owned grain-trader COFCO, the top agribusiness conglomerate Guangming, many companies from the system of state farms, state-owned chemical companies, feed, seed, agricultural machinery, rubber, and fishery companies.

Sample list of 31 of the top 100 Chinese companies for foreign investment in agriculture, February 2018